Data communication systems have been under continual development for many years. In some communication systems, local area networks (LANs) compose at least a part of the communication system. Some LANs are implemented using wireless LANs (WLANs). These WLANs exhibit some characteristics that can be problematic in data communications between various nodes within the WLAN. The communication medium, being wireless, is typically very unreliable when compared to wireline LAN networks. In an effort to combat these unreliability concerns, there is oftentimes an effort to send acknowledgement (ACK) frames back to a transmitter node from a receiver node. For example, a transmitter node sends a data packet to a receiver node, and then the receiver nodes send an ACK back to the transmitter node indicating the success or failure of the data packet's transmission. There has been much effort to try to develop a method of performing this ACK functionality successfully and efficiently.
The prior art approaches to provide this functionality have several deficiencies. One of the deficiencies in the prior art is that when a frame is fragmented into smaller frames to reduce the probability of an error-induced frame loss, an acknowledgement is required to be returned for each of the individual fragments. The ACK frame transmissions, while necessary to insure that fragment deliveries have been successful, add overhead to the network, thereby reducing the overall throughput that can be achieved. Some prior art improves on this situation by providing for a single ACK to be sent in response to a sequence of fragment transmissions. The deficiency in this prior art lies in the prior art's inability to provide a sufficient degree of resolution of the fragmented data components that have undergone an attempted transmission. The prior art approaches are capable to deal only with the entire data packet composed of the multiple fragments. When there is a problem with any one of the fragments, then the entire data packet, comprising the full set of fragments, is then re-sent from the transmitter to the receiver. This can result in a very inefficient use of the total throughput capabilities of the LAN, in that, many data components (fragments in this instance) may need to be re-sent after they have already been successfully sent in the first place.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional systems will become apparent through comparison of such systems with the invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.